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Outsiders/Issue 2
"Claire...are you okay?" Jim asked as he sat down next to his granddaughter on the garden bench. It was a battered old thing with rather obvious signs of wear and tear, which incidentally was how Jim saw himself. He found it uncomfortable to sit there without a cushion, as the uneven planks pressed into his aching back, but he couldn't leave his little girl alone on a day like this. Oh how he missed the days when he could call her that without being glared at. "I'm fine gramps..." Claire sighed in reply. Jim could tell that something was troubling her, but he didn't know what; she certainly wasn't giving him any clues. She was sitting in her usual position, leaning into the corner of the bench with both feet up on the seat, but she had curled her legs in a little to make room for him. She was wearing her normal clothes, dark t-shirt and equally dark jeans, and her hair was still in it's usual shade of blue. Apart from her solemn tone of voice, there was no indication that anything was bothering her, but Jim knew otherwise. He always knew when Claire was down, even if he didn't know why. "Come on love, please, you know you can talk to me..." "Gramps, I'm fine. It's just- urgh, it's nothing." He could tell that she was trying to block it out, to save him from sharing her sorrow, but he wasn't having it. "Claire, tell me, please..." he prompted. "I know there's something getting you down, and I know you don't want to spew all your woes and misery at me, but I'll be worrying about it if you don't. I'd rather be sad and in the know than happy and worr-" "Alright, you win old man" Claire said, interrupting her grandfather. This was how their chats always worked, he'd nag her until she just gave in and told him the problem. He wished it wasn't like that, he wished that she'd come to him with her problems rather than bottle them up until he noticed them, but what they had was better than nothing. " It's how we lost Jane..." she continued. "When you first got me the job here, she was the only one to welcome me...well, that sounded a bit harsh on you, but you're family, you kno-" "Yeah, I know what you mean love." "Remember when you were on that training course, on my second day?" "Only vaguely, I'm afraid." "Well, Lawson was being an arsehole on that day. He wanted so many jobs doing at the same bloody time and I didn't know where to start. Fix the van Claire, make lunch for the kids Claire, clean out the rabbit cage Claire, it was awful, he wouldn't stop." "I remember Harriet telling me about that. Lawson was just being Lawson, and you weren't used to it yet." "It was more than that, I think he felt that I wasn't right for the job. I bet he only offered it to me as a favour to you..." "To be fair, turning up to work at a children's home with blue hair and a Nirvana shirt probably wasn't the best way of making a good first impression. "True, but that didn't excuse him treating me like a pack mule. And Harriet was supervising a visit between Carson and his bloody mother, so it was just me, Jane and High King Anthony around here." Jim almost laughed. He didn't always agree with Claire's opinions, but this one was spot-on. Anthony Lawson really did act like a king, although over the past few days he had been making a steady transition from High King to Mad King, like that King Airy-something from one of those fantasy books he'd borrowed from Lance. "You know what happened that day?" Claire asked him, continuing from where she'd left off, before answering her own rhetoric. "Jane passed me the tools while I fixed the van, Jane helped me make the sandwiches, Jane watched the rabbits while I cleaned the cage. Jane did all of that for me in one day, and I can't even think how many times she's helped me since...and now she's dead...my best friend is dead...oh god that sounds pathetic doesn't it, my best friend was a middle-aged care worker with arthritis and a gammy leg..." "She was a great woman Claire, it isn't pathetic at all. If anything, you're lucky, you couldn't get a better friend than our Jane..." "Yeah...well that's it...people are sad when their friends die of natural causes...and Jane had her fucking skull bashed in..." "Surely you're not saying that La-" "No!" Claire snapped. "I'm not saying that Lance shouldn't have bloody killed her! It was either her or Rachel, and she wasn't really Jane anyway...and judging by those reports on TV she was never going to come back..." She paused to sit up, and then rested her head on her grandad's shoulder. "Look, I'm sorry for snapping, it's just...I'm mourning..." "I know love, I know" Jim told her with a knowing and reassuring smile. He wrapped an arm around her, and before he knew it, she had her head pressed against his chest and tears were streaming from her eyes. "Grandad, I know I don't normally show it but...I love you..." "I love you too sweetheart...don't forget that...please..." ----- "Ant? That you?" Anton heard his sister ask as he entered her bedroom. He couldn't believe that she didn't even look up from her magazine, last month's copy of Empire, when she heard someone. For all she knew, it could've been one of those...things. "Yeah, it's me Kitten" he replied, calling her by her special nickname, as she called it. He'd called her that ever since she was born, when he was a toddler who couldn't say her actual name. Over time, the name stuck, and Caitlin had become Kitten, or sometimes Kitty if he couldn't be arsed to say the whole thing. It was only between the two of them however, of course. One of many secrets that they kept. "Come sit up by me" Caitlin ordered, moving so that the right half of her double bed was free. With a reluctant sigh, Anton laid down next to her, before scooting himself up the bed so that his head rested on one of her bright pink pillows. He felt as though he were drowning in a sea of pink, a feeling that heightened when she wrapped a pink-sleeved arm around him, pulling him close. "Wanna?" "Yeah su- oh jeez what am I saying, no of course not." Anton stammered, obviously not in the best state of mind. "Alright, no need to be rude, I just thought that you might need to...unwind, y'know." "Well, thanks for the offer Kitty, but not today. To be honest...not ever again...we need to stop..." "Stop?!" Caitlin exclaimed, before realising the delicacy of the subject matter and lowering her tone. "Why the fuck should we stop? I aint stopping?" "Because...well, because it isn't right. You're my sister Kitty...what we did...what we do...it just has to stop..." "Half-sister, same cum different cunt, remember?" "Doesn't change the fact that everyone'd swing for us if they found out...Lance would fucking kill me, Maxine too, and god knows how Lawson would react..." "It's none of their business what happens between us. The world's gone to shit Ant, we can do whatever we like, you're hardly gonna get transferred to a different bleedin' care home. As if that stopped us before, anyway..." Caitlin trailed off, unsure of what else to say. "I'm sixteen, you're fourteen, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I'd be strung up as a paedo the minute someone found out." "I could bribe anyone who found out..." "Yeah, because everyone knows that the best way to keep an angry child abuse victim quiet is to get an underage girl to suck them off. I love you Kitty, but you can be a fucking div sometimes." "Well that's it really Ant. Like you said, you love me, and I'' love you. That matters more than us shagging like wild animals every few days." "Yeah, it does." With a solemn smile, Anton leant over and kissed his sister's soft lips. As he felt her reciprocate, he went to the place where she always took him- Heaven. The frenzy of it all, the feeling of her body writhing against his, was the most beautiful think he had ever felt. Every time they kissed, he loved it even more, he loved ''her even more. His beautiful sister, Caitlin, his dearest Kitten, for whom he'd travel to the ends of the earth. If someone had walked in right there and then, he wouldn't have cared. To hell with everyone else, this was how they were happiest; tangled up in a passionate embrace. "What are y-" Anton began to ask as he felt Caitlin pull away, but he cut himself off when he saw her raise a hand to her eyes, and then a finger to her lips. She wanted him to close his eyes and be quiet, and in these tender moments, he was putty in her hands. His everything could do whatever she wanted. That was what she was to him, not a sister, not a lover, but everything. She was everything that he cared about, and so much more. "Let me remind you why we do this..." he heard her purr. He felt her undo his trousers, then he felt her tender hands in his boxers, and then he felt her mouth. It was pure bliss. ----- Carson felt a tug on his sleeve as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Lilly had been fiddling around in his bedroom all night, and he was tired as hell. No tugging was going to wake him, no matter how urgent it seemed. And it seemed very urgent. "Carson..." a voice whispered. "Carson...it's me Rachel...please wake up..." "Christ on a bike" he muttered to himself as he opened his eyes and sat up. Rachel Crayton, Maxine's bright and bubbly little sister, was standing next to his bed and staring at him with sad brown eyes. "What's up little 'un?" "I just saw Anton and Caitlin..." she replied, her voice shaking. She looked disturbed, but Carson couldn't tell why. "What do you mean? Don't you see them every day?" "No, they were...kissing...and then she took his trousers o-" "What? Really?" Carson asked. "Anton...and Caitlin? As in, brother and sister?" Rachel nodded vigorously, as if it were a matter of life and death. "Oh Jesus..." he sighed, unable to think of anything else to say. He had no reason to believe that Rachel was lying, but he couldn't even imagine the two redheads shagging eachother, not that he'd want to anyway. Just when he'd thought that nothing could surprise him... "Can you tell Lance please?" Rachel asked him, still shaking with nerves. "Lance says to tell him everything, but I don't want him to get mad at Anton..." "Uh...hop up here" Carson told her, patting the space on the bed next to him. "I need to tell you something, promise me that you'll listen?" "I promise" she replied, with the friendliest and most awkward smile she could muster. "Listen kiddo, I don't wanna be the bad guy here, but you can't tell Lance. Please, don't tell anyone." "But why Carson? They're doing something bad." "I know but...uh, how do I put this..." Carson paused before continuing. "I love you, all of you. I love your sister and Lance...and I love Anton, and Caitlin...I love Lilly, probably a bit more than she realises...and most of all little 'un, I love you. If anyone finds out, this tears us apart. We tear each other apart..." "Carson you're scaring me..." Rachel shuddered. Despite her fright, however, she hugged him tightly "I know" he said, returning the hug and chuckling lightly as tears began to stream from his eyes, which he wasn't even expecting. "I'm scaring myself kiddo, I've been scared ever since this happened...and now I'm laying my troubles on a nine year old girl...oh Jesus fucking Christ..." He closed his eyes and imagined how things were a month ago. Everyone was happy, there were no monsters and no mentally unstable care workers, and certainly no unlikely revelations of incestuous lust. For then, for just a moment, he was happy. And then he opened his eyes and he was back in the world, the same world that had dedicated the pasts seventeen years to making his life a living hell. Over the last couple of years, it'd played nice. It had given him a family, as dysfunctional as it was. It had given him a strange girl who he knew would never love him back. It had given him all these wonderful people, and now it was going to take them all back. One by one. It was going to destroy him, and he was scared. Trivia